Improvement in the manufacture of corrugated plates



II -m,

UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

IMPROVEMENT IN THE MANUFACTURE OF CORRUGATED PLATES.

Specification forming part of Letters Patent No. 36,424, dated September9, 1862.

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, SAMUEL J. SEELY, of the city of Brooklyn, in thecounty of Kings and State of New York, have invented a certain new anduseful Improvement in the Manufacture of Corrugated Iron Plates andSheets; and I do hereby declare that the following is a full and exactdescription of the same.

The method at present used for producing corrugated iron plates andsheets is to form them from plates and sheets of wrought-iron bycompression or rolling. This method is perfectly successful when appliedto sheets and plates of the thicknesses embraced in the market terms ofsheet-iron and boiler-iron, and when the corrugations to be produced areuniform in degree throughout the length of the sheets and plates, but isinapplicable to plates and sheets of greater thickness, on account ofthe enormous pressure required to produce the corrugations, and toplates and sheets having their corrugations varying in degree in thedirection of the length of the sheets. My invention is designed andintended to obviate these defects and it consists in making the sheetsand plates of any required thickness and degree of corrugation, ofcastiron cast in molds made from furnished patterns, in the ordinarymanner, and then subjecting them to the process known as themalleable-iron process, to make them malleable. By this means plates andsheets of thicknesses beyond the power of ordinary machinery to make canbe produced at a greatly-decreased expense, and plates and sheets havinga varyin g degree of corrugation, such as are required in ship and boatbuilding, (in ships and boats made of corrugated iron,) and forsteam-boiler building, can be made, which would be impossible to make bythe process now employed.

The process employed by me is, first, to make a pattern of the requiredplate or sheet in the ordinary manner, and then to have castings ofcast-iron made from it, which are to be subjected to the process abovenamed until they attain the condition known in market as malleable iron.7

A great saving in cost is attained by my improvement, as an unlimitednumber of sheets or plates of any required shape or form and degree ofcorrugation can be produced after the pattern for them is made, whichwill all perfectly correspond with each other-a result that cannot beattained by the present methods, but which is of great importance whenthe material is to be applied to the construction of vessels,steam-boilers, and other articles where absolute conformity isrequisite. The same advantage is attained in the production of sheetsand plates of thicknesses too great to be corrugated by any machinerynow used, and also in those having a varying degree of corrugation, suchas cannot now be produced correctly at all.

1 do not claim casti ng corrugated iron plates, nordo I claim renderingsuch plates malleable; but

\Vhat I claim as my invention, and desire to secure by Letters Patent,is-- Making corrugated iron plates for ships armor or other purposes,when, by reason of the irregularity of form or the thickness of metalrequired, such plates cannot be produced by rolling wrought-iron,byfirst casting said plates and then subjecting them to the processrequired to change them to the condition known and distinguished asmalleable iron.

SAML. J. SEELY.

Witnesses:

- LAWRENCE B. VALK,

E. G.GEORGE

